Projects

Time in the Project: 10 months

Team Members at its Peak: 5 members

Type of Job: Full-time. Remote

Tasks in Depth

Level Creation: During the development of the team multiple levels were made with the goal of applying the game mechanics and make them evolve; testing if a new mechanic may be fun and had a range of different uses, and tutorials. Every level was reviewed and it was decided whether the level fitted in the game or not. If a level was approved to be polished, then obstacle timeframes were adjusted, the level silhouette was given a more natural look, and decoration and collectables were added. Later, if the level was tested with a real audience, depending on how well it was received further adjustments were made or the level was entirely substituted.
Level Balancing: Once a good number of levels was made, these were arranged into a group. This group was formed with levels that contained similar content in terms of obstacles and challenges, and evolve slowly in terms of difficulty. If more levels were needed or any of them didn’t fit well thematically, new levels were made to fill the gaps.
Level Classification: A spreadsheet was made to archive information about every level made by anyone. This was done to have a better grasp about which level was reviewed, used already in the game or left out. The file also spread the levels into categories depending on the kind of challenges it had, so that groups could be made easily.

Infinite Mode Module Creation: The game contains a secondary mode where an infinite level is randomly generated with small modules of challenges. Modules were made out of the already created levels that may or may not be in the final game. Modules were adjusted or completely modified to create more modules with similar challenges but with varying difficulty.
Infinite Mode Balancing: Modules were given a difficulty value depending on the kind of challenges and the mobility of the player when facing them. Once all modules were given a value of difficulty, then each difficulty was also given a rate of appearing within every stage in the infinite mode. The infinite mode was divided into stages with increasing difficulty, where at every stage modules were picked between the module difficulties that were assigned with a percentage.

Social Media: During the later development, social media accounts at Twitter and Instagram were created and started to be used to promote the game. For 2 months I was tasked with updating the accounts with information about the game, such as level gifs, player costumes, updates and more. Also, I had to maintain any community that formed around the game.
Spanish Localization: All texts in the game were translated into Spanish. These were not literal translations, these were adjusted by taking into account the size of the area where the text was in, if the text conveyed a different idea than the original, and if the message was clear enough.

Time in the Project: 8 months

Team Members at its Peak: 6 members

Type of Job: University Project

Design: the team was composed entirely of designers, thus everyone would bring something up at some point in terms of design. With time, people would be getting other roles in the development depending on their skills. My contributions to the design aspect of the game were the conceptualization of the main mechanics, and the design of the systems I would later be in charge of programming.

Gameplay Programmer: The game was developed using Unity. The tasks I programmed were:
- Customization system: the player was able to equip in an equipment screen different weapons and attribute modifiers, and the weapons themselves could also have equipped more attribute modifiers and a secondary ability. Once back in a level, the player would see changes in its character model and the UI.
- Store: the player could access a store screen in order to buy weapons and modifiers.
- Enemy AI: enemies were capable of patrolling between different points and pause in them, detect the player by sight, proximity and player interaction; chase and attack the player, go back to patrol if the player fled, and additional actions depending on the type of enemy.
- Unlockables: after completing a level, other levels and new items for the store were unlocked. Also, it was possible to add scoring a certain amount of points in a level to unlock additional items.
- Optimization: cleaning code written by any other member of the team. Bug fixing.

Tools Programmer: an array of tools were created to make easier tasks related to level design and balancing. These were:
- Item creator tool: developers could create a new item by assigning it an image, the attributes it would modify, the price at the store, weight, and how it was obtained (default, store, unlocked by level).
- Player progression: items and levels were given a set of requirements in order to be unlocked. Some of the requirements were completing a level or set of levels, or reaching a certain score in a level.
- Enemy encounters: at any area within a level an enemy encounter could be placed. Developers could specify the enemies that would take part in that encounter, and when and where would appear. Also, encounters were given different victory conditions, such as defeating all enemies, surviving a time limit or destroying physical spawners.